Rule of the Princelings

Rule of the Princelings With his decisive Mandate, new Party Leader Xi Jinping Can Transform China. but Will he? By Cheng Li he much-anticipated 18th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November unfolded according to that classic rhythm in the study Tof Chinese elite politics: predictability giving way to ambiguity, and optimism alternating with cynicism. Prior to the announcement of the composition of the new guard, led by new party General Secretary Xi Jinping, many analysts both in China and abroad had believed that the new leadership would continue to maintain the roughly equal balance of power that existed between the Jiang Zemin camp and the Hu Jintao camp. Yet in the end, the results were a huge surprise: the Jiang camp won a landslide victory by obtaining six out of the seven seats on the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) while only one leader in the Hu camp—Li Keqiang, now designated to become premier in March— was able to keep a seat on this supreme decision-making body. In the wake of the recent Bo Xilai scandal and the resulting crisis of CPC rule, many had anticipated that party leaders would adopt certain election mechanisms—what the Chinese authorities call “intra-party democracy”—to restore the party’s much-damaged legitimacy and to generate a sense that the new top leaders do indeed have an election-based new mandate to rule. For example, some analysts had anticipated that the CPC Central Committee might use competitive (though limited) multiple-candidate elections to select members of its leadership bodies, such as the twenty-five-member politburo or even the PSC. Such high-level elections, however, did not take w Communist Party General place. The selection of elites at this congress continued Secretary Xi Jinping (second to be done the old fashioned way—through the “black from right) and other Chinese box” of manipulation, deal-cutting, and trade-offs that leaders in official portrait, occur behind the scenes among a handful of politicians Beijing, Nov. 15, 2012. (e.g., outgoing PSC members and retired heavyweight Ju Peng/Xinhua Press/Corbis figures—most noticeably the 86-year-old Jiang). 34 CAIRO REVIEW 8/2013 CHENG LI What is even more troubling is the fact that four out of the seven PSC members are princelings—leaders who come from families of either veteran revolutionaries or high- ranking officials. It has been widely noted that large numbers of prominent party leaders and families have used their political power to convert state assets into their own private wealth. The unprecedentedly strong presence of princelings in the new PSC is likely to reinforce public resentment of how power and wealth continue to converge in China. Chinese politics thus seem to be entering a new era characterized by the concentra- tion of princeling power at the top. This gives rise to important questions regarding the nature and implications of the new leadership. What caused the dramatic defeat of the Hu camp in this political succession? Does the six-to-one split of the PSC mean a shift from factional power-sharing to a new “winner takes all” mode of Chinese elite politics? Will the factional imbalance at the top seriously undermine leadership unity and elite cohesion, thus potentially threatening the sociopolitical stability of the country at large? What are the main characteristics of this new princeling elite? What should we expect in terms of economic policies, political reforms, and foreign relations under the Xi Jinping administration? And can the identities of newly promoted leaders help us understand where China is headed? Because of the key role China plays in the global economy and in regional security, the international community needs to grasp these new tensions and dynamics in the Chinese leadership now emerging at a time when the Middle Kingdom is facing many daunt- ing challenges. How the princelings govern China, especially how state-society relations unfold, will undoubtedly have profound ramifications far beyond China’s borders. One Party, Two Coalitions Though China is a one-party state in which the CPC monopolizes power, the party leadership is not a monolithic group. CPC leaders do not all share the same ideology, political association, socioeconomic background, or policy preferences. Two main political factions or coalitions within the CPC leadership have been competing for power, influence, and control over policy initiatives since the late 1990s. This bifurcation has created within China’s one-party polity something approximat- ing a mechanism of checks and balances in the decision-making process. This mechanism is, of course, not the kind of institutionalized system of checks and balances that oper- ates between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in a democratic system. But this new structure—sometimes referred to in China as “one party, two coalitions”— does represent a major departure from the “all-powerful strongman” model that was characteristic of politics in the Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping eras. One of the two intra-party groups in China is the “elitist coalition,” which emerged in the Jiang Zemin era and used to be headed by Jiang and is currently led by Xi Jinping. 36 CAIRO REVIEW 8/2013 RULE OF THE PRINCELINGS The other is the “populist coalition,” which was led by President Hu Jintao prior to the 18th Party Congress and is now headed by his prot g Li Keqiang. These two coalitions represent different socioeconomic and geographical constitu- é é encies. Most of the top leaders in the elitist coalition, for instance, are princelings. Many of these princelings began their careers in the economically well-developed coastal cities. The elitist coalition usually represents the interests of China’s entrepreneurs and emerging middle class. Most leading figures in the populist coalition, by contrast, come from less-privileged families. They also tend to have accumulated much of their leadership experience in the less-developed inland provinces. Many advanced in politics by way of the Chinese Communist Youth League and have therefore garnered the label tuanpai, literally meaning “league faction.” These populists often voice the concerns of vulner- able social groups, such as farmers, migrant workers, and the urban poor. Some clarifications about China’s intra-party factionalism are in order. Factional politics and political coalitions in present-day China, although not really opaque to the public, still lack transparency. With a few noticeable exceptions—such as former party chief of Chongqing Bo Xilai and party chief of Guangdong Wang Yang, both of whom conducted distinct self-promotion campaigns a couple of years prior to the 18th Party Congress—a majority of political leaders in China usually take a low-profile approach, lobbying for promotion in a non-public manner. Unlike the decades of Liberal Democratic Party hege- mony in Japan (1955–94), for instance, factional politics within the CPC have not yet been legitimated by the party constitution. A few leaders may have dual identities as both princeling and tuanpai, although one can usually identify their factional affiliations by the channel through which they are promoted and who their patrons are. Leaders of these two competing factions differ in expertise, credentials, and experience. Yet they understand the need to compromise in order to coexist—especially in times of crisis. By and large, these two competing camps have maintained a roughly equal factional balance of power over the past decade. The previous nine-member PSC, for example, was characterized by a five-to-four split, with five seats held by the elitist coalition and four by the populist coalition. The Hu Camp’s Waterloo This factional balance of power now appears to be broken. There were three eligible candidates who served on the previous politburo and met the age requirement but failed to be elevated to the PSC at the 18th Party Congress—all were tuanpai leaders. These include the only woman candidate, State Councilor Liu Yandong, and two rising stars, the aforementioned Wang Yang, and former head of the CPC Organization Depart- ment Li Yuanchao. All three, especially Wang and Li, are regarded as staunch advocates of political reform. CAIRO REVIEW 8/2013 37 CHENG LI The Chinese public will likely understand why Wang was not elevated: many con- servative leaders saw him as a threat. Wang’s main political rival was Bo Xilai, and the two tended to balance each other in terms of power, influence, and policy agenda. Now that Bo is out of the political game, the conservatives do not want Wang to remain in it. That Li Yuanchao was not elevated, however, was surprising. In charge of personnel promotion within the CPC over the past five years, Li carried arguably the strongest weight in selecting delegates to the 18th Party Congress. An instrumental voice for rule of law, governmental accountability, and intra-party democracy, Li has many support- ers, especially among liberal intellectuals. He has also played a crucial role in recruiting foreign-educated returnees and promoting college graduates who work as village cadres. Furthermore, at the congress Hu Jintao ceded his military position instead of fol- lowing the practice of his predecessor Jiang Zemin, who retained the chairmanship of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC) for two years after resigning from the formal party leadership. Now the number of princelings in this supreme military leadership body is unprecedentedly high. Four of the eleven members of the CMC are princelings, doubling the representation of princelings since the formation of the previous CMC five years ago. This outcome is particularly startling when one considers the fact that Hu Jintao and his ally Wen Jiabao decisively expelled Bo, a notoriously ambitious princeling, from the party in 2012.

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